COMMON NIGHT-HERON. 167 



not been ascertained, or indeed even enquired into, although 

 it is a subject not unworthy the attention of professed or 

 professing ornithologists. That pelagic birds do follow ships, 

 is well known, and some of them, as the petrels, get small 

 thanks for their society, as the sailors accuse them of raising 

 those commotions of the waters which bring up their food, 

 and of course render them active upon the surface. Land-birds 

 also often take refuge in ships when beaten and exhausted 

 by the weather j and that occurs so often as to give at least 

 some probability for concluding that migrant birds may 

 generally have at least a tendency to follow ships, and thus 

 be led a little out of the line of their ordinary passage. But 

 the subject requires to be studied before any certain conclu- 

 sion can be drawn from it. 



NIGHT-HERON (Nycticorax). 



Of this genus we have no British bird, either resident or 

 regularly visiting the country; but there is at least one 

 species of which specimens have been met with as very rare 

 stragglers. These birds have the bill long and very strong, 

 a little enlarged at the base, and slightly curved at the tip ; 

 their legs are of moderate length, naked a little above the 

 tarsal joints, and with the outer and middle toe united by 

 a membrane at their base. Their necks are shorter than 

 those of the herons, or even of the bitterns ; they have a 

 few produced feathers on the occiput ; the lower part of the 

 neck is downy behind, and covered by long soft feathers on 

 the sides and front. They feed at night, are gregarious, and 

 very noisy, their sounds being harsh and guttural. Their 

 plumage is not so mottled as that of the bitterns. 



COMMON NIGHT-HERON (Nycticorax Gardeni). 



This species is very common in the extensive wooded 

 marshes and swamps of all parts of the world, and especially 

 in North America, where it is called the " qua bird," that 



